The movement started after police constable Michael Sanguinetti, who had been giving a talk to a group of students in Toronto, [said] "I've been told I'm not supposed to say this - however, women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Predators with compromised brain function are out there on the streets. They are there right now as I type this, waiting for you or I [sic] to do something risky. There is nothing that you or I can do to cure them. Nothing. Not marches, not crying, not rallies. The only thing we can do is jail these people when they commit crimes, and much more importantly, reduce our chances of being a target.

Telling these people to allow you to dress like a slut and not react is irrational. It ignores science and it ignores biology.

I understand that SlutWalkers want to drain the s-word of its misogynistic venom and correct the idea it conveys: that a woman who takes a variety of sexual partners or who presents herself in an alluring way is somehow morally bankrupt and asking to be hit on, assaulted or raped....

To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women...

Rejecting the word feminist but embracing the word slut sounds, to me, a lot like we’ve all drank [sic] the systematic kool-aid. I feel a little bit like all those patriarchal powers-that-be are snickering, witnessing the success of their hard work, having scared women away from labeling themselves feminist and instead taking on the oppressive language used to keep us down, to insult us, to objectify us, and to rape us. Hoping that they’ll stop. That maybe they’ll like us, respect us, and join us, so long as we don’t make them feel too uncomfortable. So long as we look sexy while we march.

And from the first link, a comment that got "favorited" 104 times (responding to an comment):

A question for the Metafilter hivemind before I post my usual awesome comment: A drunken woman walks alone thru an unfamiliar neighbourhood with a headband for a skirt. If she gets sexually assaulted, this is still completely 110% NOT her fault?

If an arsonist starts a fire, as happens here in SoCal, and this fire spreads into the forest and into adjacent housing, the arsonist is absolutely wholly responsible for the fire.

But, if I've not cleared the brush around my house, leave cans of gasoline lying about, and the fire burns my house down, I am responsible for not taking better care to avoid the situation.

The arsonist is legally and morally responsible. However, I could have avoided my house burning down.

In other words, there seems to be a blame/no blame approach here. There's varieties of responsibility that can be discussed, even as rapist is always entirely morally and legally culpable.

This simplistic ethical discussion is also exemplified in this quote: "that a woman who takes a variety of sexual partners or who presents herself in an alluring way is somehow morally bankrupt and asking to be hit on, assaulted or raped..."

I don't see how this "that a woman who takes a variety of sexual partners or who presents herself in an alluring way is somehow morally bankrupt and asking to be hit on" is necessarily linked to "asking to be assaulted or raped."

This is the trouble with the gay marriage debate as well. There's way too much correlation between moral acceptance and rejection of violence. I can think someone immoral but also think that violence against them is wrong. That is the very essence of Jesus and the woman being stoned. Tell the stoners to stop, but also tell the woman not to sin anymore.

If I leave my car door unlocked, and an ipad on the front seat, and I return from my errand to find it stolen, it's strictly correct that the person to blame for the theft is, in fact, the thief, but it's still pretty foolish of me to have made that theft so easy. And no one gets upset about a basic crime prevention instruction of "lock your car door" and "don't leave valuables visible." But it's taboo to discuss "crime prevention" in the context of rape, when it means we can't communicate common-sense measures like "don't get drunk around people who aren't completely trustworthy."

As far as slut-dressing, I don't know whether the particular manner of dress makes one more or less likely to be a victim of a stranger rape in a back alley. In a frat party environment, I can easily see it.

"Predators with compromised brain function are out there on the streets."

This is very true, and it's a distinction the feminist establishment will not admit. Instead, their philosophy (and that of SlutWalk) rests on the assumption that ALL men are predators. That's hate, not philosophy.

"I feel a little bit like all those patriarchal powers-that-be are snickering, witnessing the success of their hard work, having scared women away from labeling themselves feminist and instead taking on the oppressive language used to keep us down, to insult us, to objectify us, and to rape us."

I'm sorry, the 'patriarchal powers-that-be" are trying to rape women now? Isn't this pretty clearly a load of shit?

A thief broke into my garage a number of years ago. It's a separate structure. The thief took some bicycles and power tools. I had forgotten to lock the garage door. When the helpful patrolman came to take a look he said "you should have locked the garage."

Later I found a small crowbar discarded in the garden. If I'd locked the garage I would have had a busted garage door to fix.

The "thinking" seems to be that there should be no hostile environments for women -- any women, anywhere, ever, and it's unacceptable to even entertain the notion that this might not be an acheivable goal.

It reminds me of 99% of good-cause nonprofit language. "No child should ever go hungry." "We're on the front lines of the battle against cancer, and we're going to win it once and for all." "World peace."

Usually people then get hit up for money. In the case of slutwalks, the kind of people who want to do this publicly get to do so.

"Responsibility for rape rests with rapists. Not with victims. Period."

We're talking about animals here. If I told you that bears are the ones responsible for bear attacks and so you should take a hike in Yellowstone with salmon tied around your neck, I think the responsibility just got spread around a little.

But even if you were drunk, nothing that happens would ever be your fault.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you knowingly enter into a dangerous situation, and then get hurt, that is your fault.

"That's not fair"? Fairness is for three year olds. If you want to be free to act, if you want the freedom of an adult, then you have to bear the responsibilities of an adult. That means using judgment. That means thinking about what you're doing, and about possible consequences of your actions, and then behaving as you think appropriately.

(By the way, it's just stupid to mix up the fault of the wrongdoer with the potential steps you could take to prevent attacks.)

That, Ann, is what you are doing. Rape is a crime. Nothing someone else does excuses the rapist of his crime, and the fact that she was wearing skimpy clothes does not lessen the crime, and should not decrease the punishment.

But if anyone other than a complete idiot would have known it was a bad idea to do what she did, then it's still her fault, even if it's his crime.

Your first line of defense against criminals is you. If you destroy that line of defense, that's your fault.

A crime may make the perpetrator guilty, but it does not automatically confer freedom from responsibility upon the victim. They are simply separate. Human nature, tries to make a zero sum equation that simply is not valid. We can't help it, our minds are all fogged with issues.

It isn't going to affect men, and women need to decide what they want out of life.

I am reminded of the lines in "Lyin Eyes" by the Eagles: "City girls just seem to find out early. How to open doors with just a smile." whenever I hear about this subject. That part of the song plays through my head then.

The wife or old girlfriend there knew how to turn on the sexual charm when she wanted something done. What she was doing, was exploiting the sexual attraction that males feel to females.

In other words, and I think that not all women really understand this, males are hard wired to react in a specific way to sexual stimuli. They get used to this, and are shocked when, sometime between 40 and 60 it all of a sudden disappears - and hence all those commercials for removing lines, cosmetic surgery, etc.

This isn't really initially a question of judgment on the part of guys. They just react. Happens dozens of times a day, and much more when you are in your 20s. The place where judgment comes in, is what the guys do about it. And, judgment is what goes when you are drinking, which is one reason both that we have DUI laws, and that people routinely violate them.

What we are talking about are sexual cues. The female is dressing and/or acting like she wants sex, and then is shocked that some guys, who are hard wired to respond to those sexual signals, is judgment impaired enough (often by drink) to respond.

Think about it this way - what we are talking about from a male's point of view, is the equivalent of our female ape/monkey relatives presenting their engorged vulvas to males, and then not expecting the males to mount them.

As to girls sleeping around - has always happened, and always will. You have several issues here. First, from a male's point of view, paternity of our putative offspring is of extremely high concern for us. More so than most anything else. This is a biological imperative - the genes of the guys who raised other guys' children, thinking they were their own, died out. And, hence, why adulterous wives are still being murdered in this world, and a lot of other similar things through the ages.

Again, we are up against basic male programming. Something that we have acquired as a species over the last hundreds of thousands of years.

So, what is wrong with a girl who sleeps around? She logically appears to males as untrustworthy, when it comes to protecting the paternity of his children. If she is going to have sex with all these other guys, how does he know that she won't continue to do so, on the side, after they are married?

Lest you think that men are alone here in their programming - this brings up another dynamic - that both sexes participate in secret sex. It fits both of their sexual strategies. From the male point of view, he can have more surviving grandchildren if he cheats on his wife and doesn't get caught, and the female can benefit by getting alpha genes for her grandchildren, while being married to a beta, since there aren't enough alphas to go around. The beta raises the alpha's kids as his own, and everyone is fine, except that the beta's genes die out more quickly as a result.

I think that the dynamic in girl-world is a bit different. Female peer pressure is a good part of why young women don't just run around without any clothes on. Call it preventing the race to the bottom. And, this is compounded by the fact that the female body ages, in terms of sexual attraction, far faster than the male body. This is again evolutionary - scarce resources are expended to make young fertile females maximally attractive. Then, they are supposed to get married, raise kids, etc., and those resources are put elsewhere (esp. in reproduction).

The thing that best hides the "ravages of age" for women is clothing. All of the (even slightly) older women, along with the betas, want their fair share of opening those doors with just a smile. And, hence, girl-world peer pressure to prevent the race to the bottom, where the other women gang up on the outliers, as much as possible, to keep their clothes on and them out of males' bed until marriage, as much as possible.

One problem with our society is that these traditional constraints on behavior and dress are much weaker because many tend to live far away from their families, and, esp. their female relatives, who, in an earlier time, could have used peer pressure to control both dress and sexual activity for their young females.

So, yes, I am cynical about the effectiveness of this sort of protest.

"I feel a little bit like all those patriarchal powers-that-be are snickering, witnessing the success of their hard work, having scared women away from labeling themselves feminist and instead taking on the oppressive language used to keep us down, to insult us, to objectify us, and to rape us."

Look at the stupid-ass name the organizers decided for the event. The 'patriarchal powers-that-be' aren't snickering, that's outright laughter.

The feminist movement is losing momentum because people like my daughter think they're stupid and hostile.

Even when it comes to something as simply dumb as a moronic theme name (you know, like the ones for prom), these people need to over-blame someone else.

Think about it this way - what we are talking about from a male's point of view, is the equivalent of our female ape/monkey relatives presenting their engorged vulvas to males, and then not expecting the males to mount them.

Keep in mind that the male ape or monkey that did not do the dirty here, was the one who wasn't going to pass on his genes.

Evolution is harsh. Those least fit to survive do not leave as many grandchildren, and, ultimately, their genes die out. That is a major imperative.

Also keep in mind that, though we have a lot of different evolutionary pressures on us as a species, some of the strongest involve breeding, and for good reason, since it is the breeding that perpetuates our genes.

And, finally, we all spend our lives combating and overcoming our natural urges and imperatives. But these women are fighting millions of years of evolutionary programming.

A while back I read a piece by a psychiatrist on a patient who had problems with using common sense. She tended to go walking through bad areas because "I should be able to go wherever I want!"; she could or would not pay attention to "Yes, you should, but that doesn't mean that taking a walk through 'X' neighborhood is a good idea."

It's always the fault of the person who acts or feels - they are responsible for their own actions. Let's take this to all its conclusion as well:

If someone walks up to my wife in public and insults her terribly, its my fault for getting angry. I could've been calm and rational.

If I walk into north Philadelphia in a KKK costume painted with racial slurs, and get attacked by a mob, it's the fault of the mob for not controlling themselves. I have no fault.

If I walk into a gay bar and take a drink from a stranger who looks really shady, and I wind up getting drugged, I have no personal responsibility nor should I have been obligated or expected to do anything differently.

If I go into a Saudi Arabian market and spray random people with Pig's blood from a squirt gun while lighting Koran's on fire, and I get attacked/assaulted, I still did nothing wrong and I should be able to repeat my actions.

If I dress up like hitler and walk into a synagogue and people get upset and act out against me, I still did nothing wrong.

The aggressor is always 100% at fault and the victim should never be under any obligation to act differently.

It'd be great if we could have a cultural scenario where, as the great Camille Paglia would like, women could really self-determine to live lives of chastity, or conjugal domesticity, or highbrow promiscuity of the Simone de Beauvoir sort, or even be a streetwalker.

But as Camille understands, this is an awful lot for any society to digest.

College girls are jerked around with all these ill-defined 'models' of how to exert their femininity, a lot of them things nobody would ever reasonably consider appealing.

These SlutWalkers are mostly lesbians and LUGs with maybe a poorly-used 90 IQ.

I feel sorry for the impressionable, but basically more sensible and gifted, young women who get snookered into wasting years and tears toiling in the saltmines of feminist cant and self-thwarting lifestyle choices before their heads clear.

Of course the flip side of this is to dehumanize men. To make men just robots of their libido who have no control when they see a alluring woman. This silly fantasy gives the perp the pass. No is no. No excuses. It is not that hard to behave. Next we will be blaming banks for the robbery...after all they are flaunting their assets.

I bet the sluts in question (and their hangers-on) have all sorts of unkind words for non-sluts.

"Prude" was popular when I was a kid. I guess, back in Ann's day, it was "Square". "Puritan". "Anti-sex bigots", and so on.

I would wager the percentage of people on either side of the "slut" issue that simply disapprove of others' lifestyles is astronomically higher than the percentage that thinks girls should be raped. That latter number approaching around 0%, I'd wager (at least outside certain Muslim communities).

So it does seem like they're walking for—and really, "walking for" an abstract concept is pretty dumb—freedom from the onerous burden of self-defense.

Wrong. Not period. Rape is a special type of crime and should be severely punished no matter what circumstances brought the rape. However it is not always 100% blameless on the woman's side either.

When you are given a tool, for example a chainsaw, and you are foolish and careless with it and you get injured, do we blame the chainsaw?

Our bodies are the tools we have been given to live with and the way we conduct our lives and use our tools is up to us. We must take personal responsibility for our OWN actions.

Sometimes bad things happen to people through no fault whatsoever of their own. Other times they bring the trouble upon themselves.

When you are foolishly hiking in the wilderness, unarmed, with no care or consideration of where you are or your surroundings and you are attacked by a wild animal, do you not need to accept some of the blame for your actions.

Note, I am not saying that all men are wild animals, however to be realistic, there are some pretty nasty characters out and about. They don't have the saying "It's a jungle out there" for no reason.

Women are responsible for taking as much care and caution as circumstances warrant.

Sometimes bad things happen to people through no fault whatsoever of their own. Other times they bring the trouble upon themselves.

Walk like a slut, act like a slut...don't be surprised and offended when men think you ARE a slut and treat you as such.

Truly no one deserves to get raped, and certainly we should blame rapists for rapes. But c'mon ladies. If you dress like a ho, that's how people are going to treat you.If you walk around with no underwear and your tits hanging out, and guys come up to you propositioning you, you shouldn't get mad that they,re treating you like a sex object. Because you're wearing a hoes uniform, and suggesting that you're looking to give away your sex.

From a personal safety standpoint, why do women not get that how they dress potentially puts them at risk, not because they deserve to get raped, but because how you dress or behave in a certain neighborhood can dictate how you get treated.

Like say I walked into Harlem with a klu klux klan kleagle uniform on and walked around with a sign denigrating blacks. Now you might say I'm not responsible for my beating and only the perpetrator is responsible. But really? If I said, don't assume I'm a racist simply because I'm wearing a kkk outfit and carrying a sign calling black people monkeys, people would question my sanity. If I was crying in my hospital bed about getting assaulted, most people would respond "well you shouldn't have dressed up like a kkk member and then walked into Harlem you moron. You deserved to get beaten because you are retarded!"

alternatively it would be like dressing like a matador, walking into a bull fighting ring, waving a red cloth around and then complaining that you got gored by a bull.Now certainly the bull is responsible for attacking you, but do you bear no responisibility for you predicament?I

There seems to be a possibly deliberate but more likely unconscious diminishing of the claim that ‘rape isn’t about sex’, in favor of allowing a woman to plausibly deny that she consented to sexual relations after the fact, in ‘slut walking’.

Study a PUA Game a little and it’ll become clear why this is so, and why there really isn’t anything that men (or women) can do about it.

But even if you were drunk, nothing that happens would ever be your fault.

Unless you were a man, yes? I don't think the man's intoxication is even a mitigating factor in a "he said/she said" date-rape case, whereas if the man bought the woman bought a drink, it's indeed evidence ... against him.

(By the way, it's just stupid to mix up the fault of the wrongdoer with the potential steps you could take to prevent attacks.)

No, it's not, and furthermore no one here is making that mistake. The crime is the same crime; but there is all the same a difference between the guilt of the guy who (to take a recent pertinent example) goes to great lengths to get the code of your voicemail, and the guy who tries "1234" and gets right in, because you never changed the default. Or the girl who sees the keys already in the ignition of the unlocked Corvette and the girl who disables the lock and hotwires the car.

If I left my large collection of valuable stringed instruments inside my garage, because I wanted to move them the next day, but forgot to close the garage door, and awoke to find they were all gone, I would obviously be a victim of theft. I don't think, though, that it would be at all inappropriate to point out that I was an incredibly negligent victim of theft.

There does appear to be a different standard for women and drunkenness, if both a man and a woman are drunk off their ass the women appears to not be responsible for her actions, while he man is. Why is that, ladies?

Some people prefer to be defined by their incidental features and behaviors. This does not exactly represent an enlightened state of mind. It does correspond to a very primitive and base natural order.

I wonder if they can simultaneously preserve and reject their dignity.

Oh well. For many people, the primary concern is instant gratification. I guess we should enjoy the success of past generations for as long as we can afford it. Unfortunately, there are over 6 billion other individuals in this world, and many of them are not nearly so degenerate. We will likely learn the consequences of our decadent state of existence sooner than later.

There is something called "street smarts" that protects or minimizes one vulnerability to crime. Having street smarts enables you to avoid trouble. Lack of street smarts in many environments can result in great harm.

The Slutwalk concept conveys the message that you are an easy victim to anybody looking for trouble. In practice all slutwalks do is provide entertainment to construction workers. The group provides protection and makes the participants feel brave.

If women want to make a statement they should go on individual slutwalks in high crime neighborhoods. I would recommend that before they do this they should get their CCW and bring a nice compact 9mm with them. (My wife dresses professionally and that allows her to carry a ffull size M-9)

The Slutwalk is comical at its best and provocative at its worst. It does not address the true nature of rape and sexual assault: it is all about power. Rape is all about a strong person dehumanizing someone who is supposedly weaker than them. Someone can walk with jeans and t-shirt and be targeted by a rapist.

The walk unfortunately does nothing to educate people about rape. It is all about a bunch of people saying they can wear what they want, behave how they want with no questions asked. The walk does not address the issues of child rape or acquaintance rape or same sex rape and focuses solely on how titillation is not an excuse for someone to manhandle a woman. " You can look but you can't touch" is the mantra.

By the way, it would do women some good to listen to a cop who probably deals with sex assault and rape incidents on a daily basis besides other crimes. This movement happens to be the brain child of a 17 year old who clearly lives in a fantasy world where taking preventive measures or personal responsibility is tantamount to blaming the victim for a terrible crime. Locking your car does not guarantee that someone won't break in but it is certainly a good deterrant that may stop a car thief from trying to break in.